


Unbeta'd Scrap of Let No Man

by x_los



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-13
Updated: 2008-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-22 23:57:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A rough, unbeta'd scrap of the unfinished 'Let No Man' series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unbeta'd Scrap of Let No Man

I wanted to write a bit for the kink meme for the 'sick Master' prompt, but eneded up with 6,000 words from the fucking endless 'What Rassilon Hath Joined Together' sequel, 'Let No Man Tear Asunder.' 'Let No Man' is a long, unfinished beast, but you can have this bit of it, which answers the prompt and sort of stands alone. Will post link over on meme tomorrow, when have taken this off f-lock.

Un-beta'd, so, you know, play limbo with your expectations.

***

""What sort of husband would I be if I couldn't be bothered to _come_ whilst you're undergoing an incredibly complex, hitherto unheard of medical procedure?"

"The sort that realizes an arranged marriage doesn't necessitate him embarrassing us both with entirely uncharacteristic protestations of devotion. The sort who respects either my previously implied or my now-explicit wish that he _not_ be in attendance? Choose any you like, Doctor, but I'll thank you to make your selection from outside the Academy walls." The Master, face perfectly calm, held out his right arm, palm open, over the operating bed. With a sudden slick sound a band arched out from the seemingly uniform metal and snicker-slicked around his wrist, held when he flexed his arm. A muscle in the Doctor's cheek twitched, and he leaned over the Master, now bound to the table and affecting a pose of relaxed unconcern, as if he were unaware of the vulnerability of his position.

Face very close to the Master's, the Doctor, in a conversational tone that slid as neatly as a scabbard over its knife over his brief flare of hurt at the Master's posturing, said "you know you really can make a union _you_ insisted on something of a trial, Master."

"I'd hate to think you were feeling insufficiently challenged, Doctor." The other man had stood, and the Master had to turn his head to see the Doctor swivel around in front of the door to face him.

"I'd wish you the best of luck--"

"Would you? How very sportsmanlike of you, my Lord President. Fortunately the Rani and I have devised an ingenious method of transferring my new regenerations--which you made so _very_ difficult to earn--onto this body. I've run the simulations, and find the margin of error one in which I can exist comfortably. As I recall you left me to die multiple times on that particular occasion, even after it was inescapably clear, even to someone as stubborn as all of you, that I was perfectly in earnest. It makes your current solicitude somewhat incongruous, don't you agree?" The Doctor opened his mouth to parry with self-justification, and the Master chuckled patronizingly. "Never mind, Doctor. It's unimportant. You were of no use to me then. I don't require your coddling now. You may tell the Rani I'm ready to begin on your way out."

He turned his head up to the ceiling and closed his eyes, still able to hear the surprisingly loud smack of plimsolls worn under swishing presidential robes being stomped out into the corridor, capped with a slammed-door crescendo.

***

"That _insufferable_ man!" The Doctor flung open the door to the control room overlooking the operating theater. "He seriously believed he could annoy me into slinking back to the Panopticon like a beaten dog!"

The Rani looked up from the dials. "Unsurprising. I had Rodan tell you because I need to ensure he convalesces adequately, not because I think he'll thank me for it. If he ruins months of brilliant, ground-breaking bio-engineering by insisting on some display of machismo independence and getting himself killed, I'll re-loom him fresh from the Matrix just to beat him to death myself." She straightened up her spine, stalking in that sudden, disgustingly-efficient way of hers over to another control bank. "Has he explained the procedure to you?"

"He hasn't so much as spoken of it in weeks--going on months now, actually. I knew that was suspicious. The Master is normally few things if not proud of his work--and justly so, by what I can understand of it from here. He didn't want me to know anything about this--perhaps he would have mentioned it over dinner when he was done. 'What did I do today? Well I intimidated scores of students, revised the theoretical physics of the Time Ram phenomena for a lark, and oh yes, popped off over lunch to visit the Rani and pick up a new batch of bodies. Pass the salt.' Devious, paranoid, _maddening_ \--"

The Rani flicked a metal tab across a long bar with a loud clack. "As difficult as this may be for someone as myopic as either of you are to understand, I _don't_ actually want to hear all about the two of you's adventures in domesticity. Not how you make him tea constantly in a complaining tone that stinks suspiciously of saccharine fondness, not how your precious Master didn't tell you every thought that entered his mad, devious brain this week and how you cried into your pillow about it, not a _word_ on the subject of your bedroom exploits. What I wanted to know, Doctor, was whether you'd been briefed on the science of what we're about to undertake. You must remember science: that thing with the test tubes and funny smells the pair of you used to dabble in before politics and constant primitive indulgences destroyed your higher functions?"

"You know Rani, I can't imagine why the previous Lord President thought it might be pleasant to exile you."

She smirked, made a final sharp twist to her instrumentation, and stepped back like a painter taking in a finished canvas. "Point taken." Through the window they watched a modified chameleon arch descend and settle on the Master's head. The Doctor, observing more keenly, saw his husband's finger's twitch at the sudden pressure. As if he were nervous. Everything in an eerie silence.

"Isn't there audio?" the Doctor frowned. Usually there was a two-way com between the theater and the surgery control chamber, for obvious reasons.

"He cannibalized the wires weeks ago for the mod-loom. Though he certainly had time to replace them in the interim. Of course he may well not have wanted anyone to hear him screaming." the Rani shrugged with perfect unconcern. "A species of vanity, I suppose."

Chameleon arches, the Doctor knew, were generally considered unpleasant devices, desperate last resorts. Still he hadn't imagined the Master, screaming, familiar voice made tawdry and in-eloquent and garish with anguish, familiar throat rippling with the sound, familiar body convulsing with the pain of becoming _un_ familiar. Though without being told, the Doctor had surmised that a chameleon arch must be involved, and so he might have guessed at all of that. "There's no cause to be so cavalier about this."

"Professional detachment, my Lord President." Electricity danced through the arch, and the Master's body twisted under the cuffs, his mouth hanging open, eyes wide and starring, all soundless. His hands opened and closed, opened and closed, closed and then his fingers dug in, clenching, clinging to his palm.

"I should be down there," the Doctor said, aloud but certainly not for the Rani's benefit. He would want to help any creature in this sort of pain, but the urge to lace his finger's through the Master's and soothe the writhing of his hands was particular, was to his careless, universal altruism as a masterpiece was to a child's finger-painting.

"Too late," the Rani's voice engagingly even, "the bulkheads are sealed. Standard procedure with experimental medical research."

It seemed to go on for far longer than the Doctor had been prepared, but when the light faded and the Master lay, flat and breathing slow and heavy, a quick internal reckoning found it less than a micro-span. The Rani pulled a lever down, and a large u-shaped, elegantly thin loom descended from the ceiling like a predator looming over the Master's battered body. The Master's sleeve had pulled up in his thrashing, exposing an inch of pale skin between the top of his glove and the edge of his jacket. The sight of it made the Doctor ache for his husband's vulnerability. With a start, he realized the import of the new device.

"You can't loom the new regenerations on _now_ , not directly after that! He's physically exhausted!"

"The risk vectors were hardly impacted in our models. And besides, he chose to stack the procedures this way. All finished in one endeavor rather than drawn out over an extended period. It's easier, you'll find, when his DNA's still malleable from the Arch." A spun dial and the loom revolved in a great circle over the bed, circling him, predatory to the Doctor's eye. The Master seemed too tired to struggle now--too spent with pain to feel the new barrage as his biodata knit further into its own story, spiraled into permutation and possibility. And then the Doctor was following the Rani at a brisk clip past unsealing bulkheads into the too-bright theater. The Doctor ordered the illumination down twenty percent when he saw the Master open his eyes, incoherent, and wince at the stale white glare of the wall.

"You can see for yourself why I thought it was necessary to have him nursed the next several days. He kept insisting he didn't think the nerve damage would inhibit him enough to prevent him from walking out of here within half an hour. Idiot." She checked the vitals and made a satisfied noise. "It all looks as expected. Any of the hospital staff might be commandeered--you are Lord President, after all."

"That won't be necessary," the Doctor stepped forward when the 'cuffs obligingly melted back into the table. "Bring your TARDIS into the theater and help me carry him. If I can bypass the security arrangements, I can get him directly into the bedroom with a minimum of fuss."

"But who'll be nursing him? I'm better occupied here, if that's what you're thinking."

"Ah, no. You and Brax and Romana are going to have more than enough to do dividing my commitments among yourselves for the next few days without you taking up candy-striping." The Doctor, looking up from the Master's lax, sweaty face, gave the Rani a restrained smile. "Why send out for a nurse when there's a Doctor in the house?"

***

"This," the Master said when he was conscious and capable of understanding the arrangements, ensconced in his own bed under layers of sheets and the tight-tucked duvet like the filling in a pastry, "is utter lunacy. You're the Lord High President. You can't excuse yourself from a High Council session on account of having some terribly vital chicken broth to spoon-feed. Someone more qualified would suffice. It hardly requires the President to fetch me more pillows."

The Doctor fluffed on, banging aimlessly at a lumpy pillow that was nothing like the firm, contour-adjusting foam that typically enjoyed unchallenged possession of the Master's bed. "You know before Borusa aggrandized this office it was largely ceremonial. President Mondas took three years leave to do a spot of fishing, and I see no reason why I might not take a bit of personal time myself. That's the point of having a developed infrastructure. Lord Chancellor Braxiatel, Inquisitor Romana, Castellan Andred, Chief of Staff Rodan--I didn't distribute titles just because I enjoy investiture ceremonies, lovely though the long speeches always are. In concert they can take over for me for an indefinite period of time. A few days where I'm in easy reach for consultation should be a stroll in the park. And I'll have you know _I'm_ perfectly qualified--I do _have_ a medical degree. Several, come to think."

The Master jerked open his treacherous eyes--which had sloped closed against his permission. "Still unmoved by my request that you to leave me alone, Doctor? I always suspected you were thick, but entirely imbecilic? I gave you enough credit to know when you're not wanted."

"But not enough credit to see through a transparent defensive ruse, apparently." The Doctor abandoned the too-fondled pillow and rocked back on his heels. "Did you really think I was going to take some kind of pleasure in your duress, Master?"

"Hardly, Doctor," the Master smirked, his eyes still closed. "I thought you'd indulge in your disgusting pity, and generally irritate me while I needed rest and solitude. It seems I was correct on both counts."

With a sigh, the Doctor leaned down and kissed the forehead he'd wiped clean with a compress while the Master slept. His fingers carded back the Master's loose, unruly hair.

"I believe this calls for pots of tea. Try and be good, will you?"

"What exactly do you imaging I might accomplish in the way of fiendish evil whilst wrapped in our bed like a sausage in a bun, Doctor?"

"It's you, so any number of things I can't possibly imagine. I've learned never to question your inventiveness on points of this nature, it only leads to you proving me wrong in ever more improbable costumes."

When he came back with the tea, the Master was asleep, curled in a way that looked little like his normal commanding, cover-hogging sprawl which claimed most of the surface area and always managed to pin the Doctor to him with an arm or a flung-over leg, so that extricating himself in the morning was something of a trial and woke the Master up in the process nine times out of ten. The Doctor settled in with a chair at the bedside, perusing reports and filling in paperwork, sending notes to Brax with the sound turned off on his hand-held. When he could sense the Master's telepathic field shifting back towards consciousness, he switched the device for a book, and began to read aloud from it, unable to stop himself from annotating with his own comments about having met the author and found him a very nice man, not at all _that_ sort, despite what sordid rumor might have you believe, the similarity of the rabbit hole to a species of trans-dimensional wormholes, and the more popular literary interpretations of this whole 'drink me, eat me' business. At the end of the chapter he lay the book on the bedside table and offered the Master more of the non-intrusive pain-dampeners the Rani had thought wouldn't muddle his still-delicate, now fully Time Lord physiology. The Master swallowed three easily.

"I expect the tea you insisted on making me has gone cold. A shame."

"Yes, well, it might have done," the Doctor agreed, "if I hadn't rigged up this temporal stasis field." Removing the bell-jar shaped lid from the table revealed a still lightly-steaming cup of tea, which he handed to the Master with self-satisfaction. "Now go on. It'll be very good for you--tannins, Master. Entirely soothing."

With a glare, the Master took up the cup.

"I expect you'll not admit that you still enjoy being read aloud to," the Doctor leaned back and watched as the Master cautiously sipped. "Which is perfectly acceptable--you're seven hundred odd, not seven, you've earned the right to a bit of posturing. If you want to pretend you dislike things you used to insist on whenever you had the slightest head cold, that's your business. But I'm going to read aloud for my own pleasure, and if you wanted to indicate which of the books on the table would be least unpleasant for you, since you're trapped here and forced to listen to me prattle on, I'd take your opinion into due consideration."

Smiling slightly into the teacup, the Master murmured that he didn't think _Crisis!_ , a Draconian court drama along the lines of _The Tale of Genji_ , was supposed to be an entire waste of time, and the Doctor obediently took it up, only to stop two sentences in when the urge to comment overtook him--not as entire a lapse of self-control as it might have seemed, Draconian sentences being usually so complicated they overtook a few pages, and were equalled in their tedious length only by certain Gallifreyan scholars of the old school and Earth's Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Doctor had held his tongue on this comparison, but had been near busting out the part where, historically, actually _he'd_ come in to the story himself.

"Would you prefer to hear it without asides?" the Doctor asked very casually, as if he could certainly see the advantage of just hearing the text and it didn't matter to him one way or another.

Seeming half asleep, the Master chuckled lightly. "My dear Doctor, I'm perfectly aware that you won't be happy unless you're breaking every five minutes to explain the interesting eccentricities of the grammar of women's Draconian and how once you saved the Empress from the Vizier's treacherous gift of a poisoned hatpin. And you are reading for your own pleasure, as I remember it?"

Smiling at the tacit permission he'd been given to interfere with the story, the Doctor continued on, and the Master, while not uninterested in the Grand Duke's love affair with his advisor, fell asleep to the rise and fall of the Doctor's voice, and slept through the worst of the pain.

***

When he awoke it was morning, and the Doctor had apparently decided on his usual position in the bed beside him. His normally warmer than average skin was cool to the touch, compared to the Master's own over-heated, distressed flesh. The heat reminded him of having been little but a mass of burns, a corpse of a man, once. He wrapped himself around the Doctor, using him as an ice pack, and the Doctor made a slight 'mm' noise as he was shifted, but didn't wake or resist. There. That was better.

"'s hot," the Doctor murmured, still asleep.

"Ssh," the Master quieted him, savoring how very good, how comforting the Doctor felt, pressed along his whole body, seeming to leach off the excess heat so that both were warm but neither burning. He drifted back to sleep, and when they both woke it was near-simultaneously, The Master realized their telepathic sleep fields had gotten tangled, but didn't criticize himself for his injured carelessness, or mock the Doctor for his shoddy unconscious control. It was fine. He was fine, in fact: his flesh was still too warm, but, after a few more pain dampeners, he was left weak, but wasn't actively suffering.

"You're awfully tense," the Doctor remarked, muffled into a pillow. "Your muscles. I can feel them behind me--all taunt."

"Cellular distress does have an unpleasant side effect of making the tissue seize," the Master said, and yawned.

The Doctor lifted himself until he was sitting up on the bed, and the shifted, leaning over the Master, supporting himself with an elbow on one side of his body and a hand on the other. He slid down a bit, long fingers at the band of the sleep-trousers he'd shifted the Master into after he'd collapsed at the laboratory after the procedure. The Master, who'd been disoriented, didn't seem to quite realize that someone had cleaned him up, changed his clothing to something comfortable, and manoeuvred him into the bed. Or if he did he'd yet to make any vicious comments on the subject, which would inevitably arise from his stubborn, persistent sense of shame regarding his mad notion that the Doctor might find his suffering what, pathetic? As if the Doctor hadn't seen anguish before. There wasn't anything in the way he bore it that could change the Doctor's opinion of him. It was as ever: complicated and far from entirely positive, but ultimately suffused with a devastating fondness.

"It might help," the pad of the Doctor's thumb tracing the edge of the band, fingers feathering down. "It can't hurt, if you're feeling up to it.

"How very therapeutic, Doctor. Where exactly did you go to medical school, again?"

"It'll be relaxing," and because the lack of a scoffed no was effectively a yes, please, the Doctor was peeling down the fabric and bending his mouth, lips touching the Master's hip, a light kiss, "just what you need."

"You resisted a perfectly terrible pun there."

"Terrible puns," lips moving in on a slow trail, licking closer, "really aren't my sort of thing."

The Master chucked, dropped a lazy left hand into his hair. "You're a terrible liar."

"All of _my_ puns are _very_ witty," mouthing the base, lifting his mouth to finish, "and in excellent taste." Resuming, drawing his tongue up the length of the shaft with maddening, even strokes, up and back again, regular as the ticks of a metronome.

"I'm hardly," the Master took a deep breath, "in a position to complain."

"Mm," a change in position freeing his mouth for an instant. "You're burning up. Are you sure you're feeling up to this?"

"What an apropos choice of words. Considering what I'm going to do to you if you stop now because you think _I_ have a headache, it's in your best interest to finish, Doctor."

"What, smother me with a pillow in the night?" Fingers feathering over his hips, holding the Master down, ready to press him still when it came time. "Poison dinner?" And the Doctor slid his mouth up over the whole of the Master's cock, pressed up with his tongue, and swallowed.

"I might," the Master gasped, "Doctor."

The Doctor wrapped one hand around the bulk of the Master's cock, stroking, and devoted his mouth to the tip. The Master watched him. The Doctor, in the ordinary run of things, was considered a very attractive young man in this regeneration, and the Master was a solid supporter that opinion. But now his normally pale lips were swollen and blood-dark, his blond hair a disordered halo, the longest strands of it criss-crossing in a light-catching lattice over his flushed, hectic cheeks. He wasn't passingly good-looking, he was sublime. Only the Master had ever seen him in this attitude. This species of beauty was singularly his, and that increased its charms. The Doctor glanced up at him for a moment, blue eyes fever-bright, and his red lips twitched in a smile around the Master. He flicked his tongue a final time, rough and broad, over the very tip, and the Master's hips jerked as he came forcefully, rewarding the Doctor's precautionary steadying hand. He pulled his mouth off the sensitive flesh slowly, dragging them apart, and, amused, the Master noted that the muscle contraction from the orgasm actually _had_ shaken the stiffness out.

The Doctor considered the unusual heat of his husband's flesh. "You know I think I've decided I like it? It's something like a hot toddy, very warm."

"So glad to have obliged. You're welcome to try it again whenever I'm ill."

"How very generous of you. I take it that I was right in assuming that it'd help with your cellular distress?"

The Master groaned with annoyance and, very weakly, hauled the Doctor up by the hair. The Doctor had the good grace to obligingly let himself be tugged, and the Master shoved his tongue into a mouth that tasted of himself. _His_ Doctor. He drew the Doctor's tongue into his own mouth, and the Doctor let him kiss him for a minute before muttering "but I must have atrocious morning breath," apparently in all sincerity, which made the Master break off to laugh.

***

"You know," the Master said as his husband cleared away the delicious soup he'd asked Leela to pick up for lunch, luxuriating in hours of the Doctor's complete, devoted attention, "I believe I could do with another administration of your miracle cure."

"Are you sure you're not milking this, Master?" the Doctor, amused, set the tray down and sat down himself on the edge of the bed, running his hand over the bedspread where it covered the Master's thigh.

"My dear Doctor, are you impugning my perfectly legitimate illness? I'll have you know I'm in intolerable pain." He signed dramatically to prove it.

"It sounds beastly. I couldn't simply leave my husband to suffer like that."

The Master raised the covers and his right eyebrow, mockingly. "Perhaps this time you might try deep-throating it? They do say variety keeps a man healthy..."

"Don't push your luck." The Doctor slid under the covers, tucked them around the two of their lower bodies so they wouldn't get cold, and set to work.

The next day the Master did feel better, well enough to go into work, except for the Rani's preemptive message of assurance that if she so much as heard a rumor of him setting foot outside his apartments before tomorrow she'd see him drawn and quartered--he knew damn well the projected half-life of the instability created by their modifications. The note came up on his data-pad with a loud klaxon even as he was considering putting on his robes. He handed it to the Doctor, who it had woken up. He slid on his thin, gold-wire glasses to read it, then made a noise demonstrative of a complete lack of surprise.

"She's probably right, though as ever, entirely lacking in tact."

The Master lay back down with a dismissive, irritated noise. The Doctor, he began to think, now he felt fine and his mind was unclouded, might well have enjoyed playing his nursemaid for all the wrong reasons. Poor pathetic Master, mommy's little handful, to be placated with hot soup and blow jobs as needed. It wasn't how he wanted the Doctor to see him, he'd been clear on that initially. And had the Doctor respected him enough to listen? No, of course not, the Doctor knew best. Not a trace of his own mastery anywhere in the situation. The loss of self-control involved in illness gouged at him on its own, but that the Doctor had seen it...

"Try going back to sleep," the Doctor put his arm over his torso, bringing them close. "Your temperature's back to normal."

"I've been doing almost nothing else for the last two days. I'm not tired, and I need a shower far more than I do _instructions_."The Master shrugged him off and walked to the shower, shutting the door between them definitively, and spending longer than was absolutely necessary to wash off the feeling of having been too long abed. He was determined to be sullen with the Doctor for no better reason than that the Doctor had taken advantage to his weakness to be peremptory and prescriptive. To probably laugh at him to himself: how stupid the Master had been, not to realize the side-effects would be as bad as the projections had indicated, to get himself into this position in the first place. Mister 'still on my fifth regeneration' never would have landed in such a predicament. He stormed out to find the Doctor had programed the autoclean to change the bedclothes, and was sitting himself on the edge of the made bed, reading _Alice in Wonderland_ , very probably from where he'd stopped. Oddly, he was dressed in his old clothes--cricketing trousers and jumper, coat clean and pressed. The Master hadn't seen him like this in months, and was a bit too taken aback to show all the disdain he'd resolved on.

"Stepping out for a fancy dress party, Doctor?"

The Doctor put his book down and flicked his eyes over at the bed next to him before giving the Master a polite, enquiring look. The Master sat down next to him, a little surprised when the Doctor leaned in to kiss him. After a moment he coaxed the Master's tongue into his mouth and then stopped kissing back, letting the Master do the work, leaning back on the bed as if he were being pushed down so that the Master had to follow him. The Master drew back and found the Doctor had wiggled his arms up above his head. He opened his mouth to ask him what exactly he thought he was doing, and the Doctor cut him off. "Rougher. I should have thought I'd have to have to coddle _you_ along into a bit of--" and got cut himself as the Master smashed their mouths together and pinned the Doctor's hands above his head with one of his own. Coming up for air he looked around wildly for something to hold them while he got to work on the rest of him. The Doctor cleared his throat and again flicked his eyes pointedly towards the bedside table. A quick fumble through the contents of the top drawer revealed a sturdy robe-sash, and he had it twinned around the Doctor's wrists in something ornamental and inescapable in seconds. He was ripping the other man's trousers off him and the Doctor began to wiggle as if struggling.

"I can't believe you're making me do this," the Doctor whined in almost a parody of that self-righteous, irritating tone he had. "All those poor people..." he trailed off with mournful concern.

"And I'll kill every one of them if you don't submit to this," the Master cottoned on, "the entire planet. So I suggest you very literally lie back and think of England." The Doctor squeaked with indignation as the Master shoved his tongue down his throat, moaning a very little near the end.

"You _love_ it," the Master accused in a hiss, and when the Doctor shook his head in maddening defiance and opened his mouth to tell him no the Master grabbed him by the blond hair and, freeing his cock with clumsy, hurried fingers, shoved himself down the Doctor's throat, forcing his head down, smashing his lips to the base.

"That's going to be inside you," he taunted, and the Doctor whimpered ever so slightly. The Master shuddered in appreciation, and dragged the Doctor off after a moment, not wanting to finish in his mouth.

The Doctor flopped back on the bed with a satisfying bounce, and immediately started using his mouth again. "You can't _seriously_ mean to shove that great big disgusting _thing_ in me--it'll never fit!" The prim lip trembling in indignation. "Oh how _could_ you?"

"Like this," he slicked his cock with another hand bedside-table find that he was almost sure hadn't been there when he'd gone in for his shower. "Scared, Doctor?" He bought time as his fingers worked the Doctor--who was trembling in a satisfying manner--open. They hadn't done this since before the treatment, he didn't want to hurt him. Much.

"As if I could _ever_ be afraid of _you_ ," the Doctor sniped, then gasped and wriggled when the Master pushed himself in in one smooth go. "It's too much! Please, stop! Master!" The Doctor was bucking up with his hips to force him in deeper even as he moaned denials.

"Shut up and take it," the Master hissed back, slamming in and out with as much force as he could muster, wrapping a hand around the sturdy headboard for leverage.

"Oh," the Doctor moaned, "you're a _monster_."

"Am I, Doctor?" the Master asked, breathy and curious.

"Evil, mad--" he choked as the Master very deliberately changed the angle of his thrusts. "Mmph! Master!"

"Exactly, Doctor. Do feel free to continue." He got his name in accusing bursts and then in thready moans. Perfect.

He heard a sniffling sort of sound and found the Doctor, bedraggled and half dressed, cricketing jumper pulled up and all askew, crying. He stopped immediately.

"Doctor, I--"

The Doctor winked his left eye and for an instant flashed him a complicit smile, then threw his head back and let the morning light coming in through the windows hit the fat crocodile tears. Wonderingly, the Master traced his thumb across the streaks painting the Doctor's flushed cheeks, and bent to lick them off his cheekbones before feverishly beginning to fuck him again, only occasionally pausing to kiss him or dart out his tongue along the wet lines. He jerked the Doctor roughly to a climax, hand hard and insistent around his cock, and the Doctor came with a yelp and that familiar vice-like squeeze. Never able to outlast that, he came himself with a choked gasp, jerking his hips spasmodically until he felt empty and too sated to move. He slumped down over the Doctor, panting, slipping the rope off his wrists and threading his left hand absently through the Doctor's now sweat-damp hair.

The Doctor coughed pointedly from under the Master's shoulder, and the Master lifted himself up a bit to look down at him. "Now will you stop obsessing over feeling emasculated by a touch of indisposition?"

The Master blinked, and slowly the method behind the Doctor's madness swam into focus. How do you reassure someone that they're who they've always been? Let them role-play themselves. He felt perhaps a touch played, but then he'd just gotten to live the fantasy that had sustained him for solid _years_ , and mostly he was just shocked the Doctor had let him and exhausted. Perhaps he hadn't been really ready to go back to work today--this certainly fell into the bracket of overstimulating physical activities he'd been warned off of. If the Rani ever found out about this she'd kill them both.

"Thank you, Doctor. I believe you've earned almost any concession you like." Carefully he slid out of the Doctor and fell to the side, lying on his back next to him.

The Doctor rolled to face him. "Excellent, because there was no call to be rude to me earlier. You certainly weren't complaining about the attention when it involved more physical perks for you."

He turned over to face the Doctor and smirked at the evasive allusion to eking several blow jobs out of his convalescence.

"Was that a Shibari box tie, earlier? Well done! Whenever did you manage to learn that? Or do you just troll the universe for disciplines that let you achieve the rank of 'master'?"

"Well, some idiot, you see, trapped me on Earth for a period in the seventies. I was bored out of my considerable mind, but my marooning _did_ happen to occur after Kinbaku had become popularized as a performance art in Japan in the sixties."

"I have a very hard time imagining you participating in all that, in that body in particular."

"Well," the Master chuckled, "I took in art exhibitions. Some of us don't have to interfere directly to understand a subject or a situation."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Yes, you've always been terribly quick at learning by observation. Well done. And this settles the question of where you got to for all those months, at least."

The Master shrugged. "Japan, to perfect the device far from UNIT's prying eyes, some time in Russia, where you were _never_ going to find me, with the Cold War on, over Europe and back. Quite the grand tour."

"You know they arrested the Spanish ambassador at Customs, thinking he was you? I was terribly amused."

The Master smiled appreciatively. "You can cry on cue?"

"Not a skill I use terribly frequently, but yes, as you see. In general captors are stubbornly unwilling to relent in the face of tears, but you never know. Perhaps one day I'll find someone who won't be convinced by rational argument but has a soft heart nonetheless." The Doctor slid out of bed and headed to the shower. He thought he must have gotten terribly fond of the Master over the past months, if he were willing to make this sort of accommodation for his foibles. In fact-- he turned suddenly, starring at the Master, whose eyes were heavy lidded as though he might drop off to sleep while the Doctor used the shower.

"What is it?" the Master asked, confused by the Doctor's long glance.

The Doctor, jerked out of some thought, shook his head and smiled. "I'll tell you later."

He would make it a point to tell the Master what he'd realized, very soon. It would have to be gone about carefully, but in the end the Doctor thought, shedding the remnants of his clothing and stepping into the shower, who didn't love being loved?


End file.
